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I had asked a question on SO. When I found the answer, I commented and awarded the bounty to a different answer by mistake that was not intended. Is there any way to undo this and reassign the bounty to the answer that I intended?

The changing order of the answer led to this mistake by me. I definitely want to assign the bounty to the other answer. Please let me know is that possible now?

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  • The changing sort order is what did it to me as well. And, since it's both irrevocable, and supposed to represent a sign of gratitude (e.g. "Hey, thanks, you really helped solve a difficult problem for me"), I'm left feeling bummed out for the intended recipient of the bounty.
    – Jason Whitehorn
    Sep 21, 2013 at 16:35

2 Answers 2

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Bounties, once awarded, cannot be moved -- not by the awarder, not by moderators, and not even by community managers. I've just recently seen a moderator request such a move and be told it's not possible.

I don't know if developers could do so directly in the database, but if it's possible they would need a really, really compelling reason -- munging the database is supposed to be rare and exceptional, for good reasons.

If you're still feeling grateful toward the answerer you wanted to award, you can start another bounty and be extra careful when awarding it.

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  • "don't know if developers could do so directly in the database" It's likely they'd need to change various related things in various other databases/tables, and is not usually recommended. It's why scripts are made as they can incorporate changes to the various different things, where a manual change can miss something.
    – James
    Nov 7, 2014 at 0:27
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No, it's not possible to undo the action and reassign the bounty to another answer.

From this FAQ post How does the bounty system work?:

After awarding the bounty, can I remove it or move it to another answer at a later time?

No, awarding is permanent. (But you're warned about that when actually awarding the bounty.)

However, you can offer a second bounty and award it to the answer you intended, please note that you have to double the amount of the bounty the next time.

From the FAQ:

Note that if you offer several bounties on the same question, you will have to double the amount each time (or more). That is, if your first bounty was worth 50 reputation, your second bounty on the same question will have to be for at least 100, your third for at least 200 and so on. If you've already offered a bounty for more than 250, you can still offer more bounties for 500 (the maximum amount) as long as you like (or as long as you have the rep). This doubling applies only to bounties by the same user on the same question.

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